Leaderboard

Especially one that leans heavily left. I don’t get it.

Something that gobsmacked me a couple weeks ago while perusing D&C 107, and of which I’m still pondering the significance (or lack thereof): Technically, scripturally, there’s no such thing as a quorum of deacons, or teachers, or priests, or elders. These groups sit in “council” in groups whose size is scripturally limited; but they are not called “quorums”. Scripturally a “quorum” is a body with authority to govern the church-at-large, and there are only five of them: —The First Presidency —The Q12 —A group consisting of all 70s in the Church —A group consisting of all stake high councilors in the Church —the high council in “Zion” (originally Missouri and later for a time, IIRC, a specific stake in SLC).

If you’re interested in the history of ordaining young men to the Aaronic Priesthood, you may enjoy reading From Men to Boys, LDS Aaronic Priesthood Offices, 1829-1996, by William G. Hartley (pages 80-136). As for the duties falling by the wayside, I agree that deacons are not given many opportunities for exhortation (except once or twice a year when they’re asked to give a sermon in sacrament meeting) but teachers fulfill their duties through ministering. I remember doing so at 14 and it still continues today.

The population of the church and the nature of wards/stakes at the time. The Church had grown to over 400,000 members ordained to the priesthood. The organization of wards and stakes were haphazard. Not all men were ordained. The practices between wards (bishops) and stakes (stake pres) varied so much that you'd think you were in a completely different Church. Any given ward might have an abundance of Melchizedek priesthood or a single deacon. (I'm exaggerating, but you get the point). Additionally, with many men merely "sitting in the congregation" they felt like there was nothing for them to "do." And when men have nothing to do, they go inactive. It was fairly clear that we had enough males to perform the necessary leadership and liturgical functions. But we needed a system by which to ordain sufficient men to the required offices to perform such duties in each locality. And it was a goal to allow each stake (for the most part) to act independently. Many methods were considered. They realized that if they based it on age, it was a systematic way of "forcing" leadership to look at every male in the ward/stake. It encouraged all males to be ordained as they came of age. They settled on the procedure that eventually evolved into the system we have today. I particularly like it in this day and age because it has become a rite of passage. And in a world where that has been taken away from our society and replaced with activism, influencing, and debauchery as a rite of passage, I'm very thankful that we (at the very least) have such a thing.

1. This is Elder McConkie’s opinion. Not an official declaration of the church’s official position. 2. Elder McConkie continued to maintain that blacks were descendants of Cain and that the ban was the result of a curse put upon them by God. He believed that God had finally lifted the curse. 3. His statement about forgetting past teachings refers to the timing of the ban being lifted. He believed it had been lifted in 1978 by revelation from God, while Brigham Young and other early leaders had taught that it wouldn’t be lifted until the end of the millennium. He may have also been referring to the teaching that blacks had brought the curse upon themselves due to actions before they were born.

As time permits I'm going through some comic strips I like and reading the archives. Today, I came to this strip from the history of "Rose Is Rose" -> https://www.gocomics.com/roseisrose/1997/01/10 For those who can't see the image, it's a cameo appearance from the Tabernacle Choir.

The abortion rate there is one of the highest in the world. It even exceeds live births.

Really, I am fairly certain that when a population drops below replacement rate, the begin passing laws that prevent people from bearing children so they won't ever get back to replacement rate again. ... OK... So, yeah. I just looked at the Greenland code. It took a while to translate from Danish. Their English version was hard to navigate. It didn't have a coherent link structure. But, yes, they do have a law forbidding marriage closer than fourth cousins. And with their population being so small, they are hurting right now. It appears that they were behind the transgenic experiments that the Dems were trying to hide. They are trying to increase their population by interspecies protextation, or prophylaxis, or procreation or something...

This seems like a reasonably reasonable thread for this